The robot-supported apparatuses for abrasive machining, particularly grinding and sanding apparatuses that are presently on the market can only satisfy the demands for high quality surface finishing with great amounts of additional (manual) labor. In the following, the term grinding is used as collective term for grinding and similar abrasive processes (like sanding and polishing), in which material is abraded from a workpiece surface by a rotating tool. The grinding results depend greatly on the degree of contact pressure that the grinding tool (wheel or disk) places on the workpiece, as well as on the circumferential velocity of the grinding tool. A grinding process is not a static process and the parameters influencing it change constantly. When grinding manually, these changes can be recognized by an experienced craftsman and necessary measures can be taken. He/She can also visually monitor the grinding results and manually adapt the grinding process accordingly. This possibility is not readily available in the case of a robot-supported grinding process.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a robot-supported apparatus for abrasive machining that is constructed to satisfy the high precision demands placed on a modem abrasive process such as grinding and that can compensate dynamic changes throughout the duration of the process. A further object is to reduce the deployment of personnel for adjusting and monitoring tasks to a minimum.